The present invention relates to cable cutters and, in particular, to a drill-powered cable cutter which can be removably attached to a standard, hand-held power drill having a rotating chuck and handle.
Cable cutters are used to cut large electrical cables of the type used in high voltage or high current applications. Such cables can vary in diameter but generally they can be an inch in diameter or larger. This class of cable is too large to be cut using ordinary hand tools. Ratchet cable cutters are known which require repeated actuations to slowly force a cutting blade through a cable. These tools are slow and they can potentially cause injuries in larger cables due to the repeated actuations required. Other prior art hand tools have elongated handles for extra leverage to cut larger diameter cables, but these tools are so large as to be unwieldy and inconvenient to carry around. This has lead to the development of power tools for cutting large electrical cables. One such tool is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,754. It has a planetary gear train to drive its cutting blade. Another powered cable cutter is disclosed U.S. Pat. No. 6,178,643 which has a cutter driven by a hand-held drill but it uses a complicated ratchet and linkage mechanism. It has been found desirable to simplify the driving mechanism needed to drive the cutting blades to slice through the cable.
Other drawbacks of prior cable cutters include the weight and bulk of an electric motor and power source therefor which are built into the cutting tool. Such built-in motors are dedicated solely to the cable cutter and can be used for that tool and nothing else. Meantime, electricians almost always carry with them a standard hand-held power drill. Today these are usually battery driven, although drills with electric power cords are still found. In any case, a tool with a dedicated motor and power supply simply duplicates the equipment an electrician already has. This adds cost, weight and bulk to the equipment needed for a particular job. Naturally, electricians prefer to limit the amount of extra weight that they need to carry around on a daily basis. So it is desirable to provide a cable cutter which works with the electrician's existing tools without unnecessarily adding to them.